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<font size="-1">Hello developers of the wonderful and amazing open
source software (Free Software if RMS is listening), Scribus!<br>
<br>
I joined this list in hopes that I could share two stories with
the developers of Scribus, if this is the wrong venue please issue
me a swift rebuke or a gentle nudge, depending on your mood ;)
Here goes:<br>
<br>
</font><font size="-1">--------------------------------------------------------------------</font><br>
<font size="-1">Success! Making Scribus Work in the Workplace<br>
--------------------------------------------------------------------<br>
<br>
I am the "web guy" at a bay area nonprofit, and an open source
cheerleader. My boss supports me and likes open source too. I
routinely send emails to our internal list, suggesting helpful
free and open source tools that our campaigners can use in their
work. We have moved everyone to Thunderbird and Firefox.
Recently one of my coworkers came in and said something to the
effect of, "Hi, I just wanted to come in and say thanks. You
recommended Scribus to me and I found it really easy to use.
Look, I made these postcards!" He held up a really crisp, clean
looking postcard that he had made in-house and sent to our
printer. We saved the cost of our (over priced) designer that we
usually contract, so everyone was really happy. Success!<br>
<br>
--------------------------------------------------<br>
Fail! Making Scribus Work in the Home<br>
</font><font size="-1">--------------------------------------------------<br>
<br>
My partner (just now) was sitting across the room from me, and
asked if there was, "Anything like InDesign, but Open Source."
She is not an Open Source nut, but listens to my evangelism every
now and then. The next 60 seconds of her interaction with Open
Source software are telling, and the crux of my story. I told her
that I recommended Scribus to coworkers, and they really liked
it. I spelled the name for her after repeating it a couple times
(What?! Scribe-is? Scrib Use? Scribbus?) and she found the
website with no problem, once she had the spelling. She got to
the homepage, clicked Download on the navigation and was
redirected to Sourceforge. For non-developers who don't know what
Sourceforge is, this is disorienting and raises the "am I
donwloading a virus?" alarm. She had heard of Sourceforge, so
continued on to find the list of folders. She was slightly
confused, but figured out that the one "Scribus" without the "svn"
was the right one. </font><font size="-1">She doesn't know what
SVN is, but figured this out (she is studying for a PhD in
something unrelated to computers, so is smart and very tech-savvy
but not programmer-level-savvy). </font><font size="-1">Then
after clicking on that folder she became very confused. <br>
<br>
At this point (60 seconds later) she almost gave up, but narrowed
down the options and chose one, feeling unsure that it was right.
Then there was ANOTHER LIST of (to her) seemingly random options
to choose from on a list. She used process of elimination and
half guessed again, finding the list item with the EXE file
extension. She found it very counter intuitive that the correct
option was at the bottom of the list -- but this is kinda besides
the point, given that you don't control Sourceforge's UI.<br>
<br>
The expected behavior that (just one user, but hopefully it helps)
she was looking for was to click on a large icon that says
"Download" in large font, perhaps to have an EXE automatically
download. Also acceptable would be to click on a download icon
and be directed to one to three options on a subpage, that ask for
your operating system.<br>
<br>
I think making a best guess at what the user will want when
visiting the webpage to download is worth it, to increase adoption
of the software. If people are being driven off by usability
before they download the software, you are surely missing more
valuable user feedback that could be given by someone who has the
software installed already.<br>
<br>
I hope you take this as constructive criticism, as I said before I
love Scribus and recommend it regularly to coworkers, so I want to
make sure they have a clear path to getting it up and running on
their computers. Let me know if you have any questions.<br>
<br>
The above mainly applies to Windows and Mac users, since folks
(like me) on Linux will use Synaptic, apt-get or other
repository-like ways of installing the software.<br>
<br>
Hope this helps!<br>
<br>
--ian--<br>
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